


The Thirteenth Prince

by Deccaboo



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:18:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deccaboo/pseuds/Deccaboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prince Hans of the Southern Isles is the youngest of 12 brothers and not only is he the youngest, he is the unlucky thirteenth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thirteenth Prince

**Author's Note:**

> This is supposed to feel like a 'traditional' fairy tale while reading, but might feel off in some points because it was written in a rush.
> 
> For anything misspelled or weirdly written, please forgive me!

It was often said in the kingdom of Sydligeøer, the Southern Isles, that the great Queen Gerda and her beloved Prince Kai would not lack for heirs. It seemed that the prince consort only needed to glance in his queen’s direction and she would be again blessed with child.

Their first born, Crown Prince Axel, was soon followed by a brother, Prince Anders. A year later, Prince Bendt was born. Prince Bruno followed two years after that. And so on, more princes were born to Queen Gerda and Prince Kai; Prince Diederik, Prince Dominik, Prince Friederik, Prince Florian, Prince Georg, Prince Gunnar, Prince Karl and Prince Kornelius.

The people of Sydligeøer were proud of their 12 robust princes – one prince for each of island in the archipelago of the Southern Isles; Første, Næst, Tredje, Fjerde, Femte, Sjette, Syvende, Ottende, Njende, Tjende, Elve, Tølve. Although the people were enthusiastic, as the number of princes grew, Queen Gerda’s ministers and liege-men began to worry about what to do with them all as they grew up. Each island of Sydligeøer already had a ruling jarl, and those men were not prepared to be supplanted by the overabundance of royal princes in the realm.

It was Prince Kai who suggested a possible solution, to have their many sons marry foreign princesses. It became the ambition of the queen and her prince to secure a crown for each of their sons. Princes Axel and Anders were married first – Prince Anders was married to Crown Princess Naseem, the future Queen of Maldonia, and Crown Prince Axel married her younger sister, Princess Noor, who would one day be Queen of Sydligeøer.

Far and wide the queen’s ministers travelled with the news of the many eligible princes of Sydligeøer. Kings and queens with unwed daughters responded with marriage offers of their own. As each prince was matched with a princess, preferably heiresses to their own countries, the ministers and jarls of Sydligeøer sighed with relief.

The ministers and jarls were also anxious that there be no more princes to deal with. The great love their queen felt for her husband could not be doused, and in any case, sowing discord between the prickly Queen Gerda and the only man she would listen to could be disastrous for Sydligeøer. Instead the ministers and jarls preyed on Prince Kai’s need to feel useful in the kingdom and appointed him Lord High Ambassador of the Realm, which gave him lots of responsibilities that the good prince felt obligated to fulfil to the utmost of his abilities. It also meant that Prince Kai would have to leave the kingdom for extensive foreign visits and the ministers hoped that his absences would prevent the arrival of more children that they would have to deal with.

Prince Kai journeyed to Maldonia to bring Prince Anders to marry his bride, and travelled back to Sydligeøer with Princess Noor; the entire journey took five months to complete, travelling by land and sea. The queen and her husband were joyfully reunited when Prince Kai's ship docked at the royal island of Første, and as Crown Prince Axel entered into his twentieth year and married Princess Noor of Maldonia, Queen Gerda discovered she was pregnant once again.

There was a great nervousness amongst the queen's ministers and disapproval from the 12 jarls of the islands which almost overshadowed the joy of the Crown Prince's wedding. By the time the thirteenth prince was born to Queen Gerda and Prince Kai, the people of the Southern Isles didn't know what to think, being torn between their island jarls and the queen of the realm.

The thirteenth prince was named Prince Hans, but unlike his brothers _his_ birth heralded an unhappy period in the history of the Southern Isles. The month after he was born, a squall at sea capsized trade boats from the northern kingdom of Arendelle.  The Jarl of Næst was overthrown by his brother, who was overthrown back. Crops failed, animals grew sick. A formerly inactive volcano on the island of Tredje began to issue motes of ash and rumble ominously. Each disaster was attributed to the birth of the thirteenth son of the queen.

Queen Gerda had very little time with her son because her presence was required in endless aid councils and rescue meetings and she was made to feel very guilty for having another child when thirteen was such an unlucky number.  Prince Kai, as Lord High Ambassador of the Realm, was tasked with appealing to all of their new in-laws for help. The people of Maldonia generously sent ships loaded with grain and healthy animals to replace what was lost. The people of Glauerhaven, the kingdom of Prince Bendt's betrothed, sent ships loaded with volunteers looking to help the people of Sydligeøer rebuild, (and also to transport Prince Bendt back to Glauerhaven before anything terrible could befall him.)

As Prince Hans grew up, one-by-one his brothers left the realm to be married and claim crowns for themselves. He had no brothers his age and was frequently lonely. The queen's ministers tried to approach the King and Queen of Arendelle with a view to marry Prince Hans to their heiress, the Princess Elsa, as they were close in age. However, the laws of Arendelle prevented the betrothal of children, and it was the right of all the people of Arendelle to have free choice over who they marry, or whether they marry at all, and the king and queen of that country politely declined the offer of Prince Hans' hand. Queen Gerda and her ministers stopped looking towards Arendelle for a crown for Prince Hans, and it was decided to raise him as a minister, lower in status even than an island jarl, so that one day he would support his oldest brother, Crown Prince Axel, when he became king.

Queen Gerda and her ministers had forgotten Arendelle, but Prince Hans had not. As each of his brothers became kings and princes consort of their own realms, Prince Hans dreamed of one day going to Arendelle and being crowned king of that country. The idea of marrying Princess Elsa was the furthest thing from the young prince's mind. To him, Arendelle was freedom, and far enough away from  Sydligeøer that perhaps the disaster of being the thirteenth born would not follow him there. And so, Prince Hans studied the laws and customs of Arendelle, and applied himself to these studies as he had never done for any subject before. His tutors were amazed, the ministers were relieved, and Queen Gerda and Prince Kai began to feel that perhaps some good could come from their youngest son's birth.

Queen Gerda approved of her son's new found studiousness, believing that Prince Hans had accepted his future role and that prosperity would be upon the realm because of his improved disposition. She and her beloved husband hoped for the best. But sadly another disaster befell the realm. Prince Hans had never got on well with Prince Kornelius, his nearest brother in age, and Prince Kornelius was not a particularly pleasant young man. Having been the youngest prince for many years before Prince Hans was born, Prince Kornelius was fond of meteing out the same brotherly unpleasantness that he had experienced to Prince Hans, now that there was someone who was younger than he.

On the day that Prince Kornelius was to sail to his bride, the snow fell thickly and the fjords began to ice over, preventing his departure. The blame for this shift in weather was laid firmly at Prince Hans' feet, which was terribly unfair because no one wished for Prince Kornelius to leave more than Prince Hans did. Prince Hans had reached the age of thirteen, and being the thirteenth child at the age of thirteen made all the ministers and jarls nervous, and this made the young prince feel even more angry and shunned than usual. To avoid losing his temper in public and embarrassing his parents and putting fear into the hearts of the populace, Prince Hans took himself off into the snow to walk off his anger.

Queen Gerda was required in her state chambers all day to discuss the next possible date for sending Prince Kornelius to his princess, and Crown Prince Axel was required to be with her as her heir. After several hours, Prince Kai decided someone had to go after Prince Hans, and in the absence of volunteers, the dutiful prince took it upon himself to go and search for his son. The falling snow had almost obscured all of Prince Hans' footprints and Prince Kai walked for many miles in circles as the sky grew dark and the cold began to bite.

Prince Hans had hidden from the cold in a woodshed, but when the sky began to darken he decided he had better make for home. Trudging through the snow, he saw a shape on the ground, a little like a fallen branch, but as he grew nearer he saw that it was a person collapsed in the snow. Helping the cloaked person to their feet, Prince Hans let the weary and cold person lean on him and he led them back down the track Prince Hans had first taken, with the queen's palace their destination.

When Prince Hans returned, Queen Gerda was frantic with worry and embraced her chilly son for the first time in his life, settling him in front of the fire in a sitting room and calling for blankets and hot soup. In the warmth of the palace, the weary traveller Prince Hans had brought with him collapsed once more, and to the horror of everyone, when his cloak was pulled from his face, the traveller was discovered to be Prince Kai. The glare Queen Gerda shot towards her thirteenth son was full of ice, and the queen commanded that her husband be brought to his bedroom and the fires to be stoked hot throughout the night.

Prince Hans suffered pains in his fingers and toes as the warmth of the fires drew out the cold but he dared not complain, watching the palace staff race from room to room for more fuel to keep Prince Kai's fires burning hot. Queen Gerda did not leave her husband's side all night. Prince Hans kept to himself in the sitting room, crouched by the fire.

Prince Hans was awoken the next morning by the tolling of bells and the bustling of servants as they closed the curtains and doused lights. Each had a band of black tied about their upper arm. Crown Prince Axel entered the room and dismissed all of the servants. The eldest prince was dressed head to toe in black with a suit of clothes over his arm which he offered to Prince Hans without a word, and it was then that Prince Hans realised their father had passed away, and of all the things he had been accused of causing his whole life long, this tragedy was down to his innate ill-luck as the thirteenth prince.

Prince Hans was saved from the immediate wrath of his mother because of the custom of the Southern Isles that the immediate family of the deceased remain silent for a month, and by the time that the period of silence was drawing to a close Queen Gerda's fierce anger had become the worst kind of desperate grief. The queen imposed a vow of perpetual silence upon herself, hiding from her subjects and withdrawing from her family. After a month of silence and the absence of the queen, Crown Prince Axel assumed his mother's duties, waving Prince Kornelius off to his new bride, and the need to do something with the unlucky thirteenth prince falling on his shoulders.

Crown Prince Axel did not blame his brother for their father's death. He was much older than his teenage brother and a father himself. Against the wishes of his wife, Princess Noor, who believed in the superstitions that Prince Hans was unlucky, Crown Prince Axel had Prince Hans tutored alongside his own children and insisted that Prince Hans continue with his interest in Arendelle, promising to send him there as ambassador when Prince Hans came of age. Under the kind attentions of his brother and the company of his young niece and nephew, Prince Hans began to heal and believe he was not unlucky.

Queen Gerda, however, did not recover from the depths of her grief. The much-loved queen was missed by her people but could not be persuaded to lift her vow of silence or return to ruling the kingdom. From her seclusion in Prince Kai's apartments, Queen Gerda wrote a heartbroken note to Crown Prince Axel and her ministers and jarls that she was unable to continue as queen without the man that she loved. It was the instrument of her abdication.

The loss of the prince consort who had done so much for the country was borne grimly by the people of the Southern Isles, but the loss of the queen who had served them so well and for so long came as a horrible shock. Most people thought they knew how much the queen had loved her husband, but this depth of feeling was a surprise to everyone. People prayed in the courtyards for the queen to stay strong and to recant her abdication because they all feared that the next action Queen Gerda would take would be to join Prince Kai in the next life. However, on King Axel and Queen Noor's coronation day, the sun shone and the birds sang, and the queen dowager appeared in the procession. Although she was dressed in mourning, Queen Gerda looked lively and her old humour showed lightly in her eyes, although when she looked upon Prince Hans seated beside her grandchildren, the daughter and son of King Axel, her eyes glittered with ice and her mouth was a grim slash. Queen Gerda returned to her seclusion soon after.

News reached Sydligeøer that the King and Queen of Arendelle had died in a dreadful accident at sea. Prince Hans was watched suspiciously because of his interest in the country of Arendelle and his responsibility for the death of his father, but this tragedy could not be attributed to him, much to his relief. Prince Hans begged for news of Arendelle and news of the now-Queen Elsa, but none came. Queen Elsa shut the gates to the kingdom and insisted on seclusion. The people of Sydligeøer, having so recently lost their own rulers in tragic circumstances, prayed for Queen Elsa and her young sister, Princess Anna, and hoped for the day that Arendelle would open its gates again. No one prayed harder than Prince Hans, who felt his future slipping away.

Years passed and Prince Hans grew up. The attention of his oldest brother trailed away as King Axel's royal duties interfered with the time he could spend with his children, let alone his kid brother. Queen Gerda was never seen outside Prince Kai's apartments. Prince Hans still loved Arendelle, or the idea of Arendelle, and thrilled his tutors with his command of the language of that country, his knowledge of the customs of Arendelle and their major imports and exports. The tutors reported back to King Axel and his ministers and it became clear that when a message came from Arendelle that the country would be reopening their gates to the world and welcoming representatives to attend the coronation of Queen Elsa, King Axel felt his brother's time had come at last.

As Prince Hans' ship left the port of Første for Arendelle, his heart was light and hopeful. The prince's precious maps of Arendelle and history books were packed for the journey, although he knew their contents all by heart. Ignoring the crowds at the port waiting to see him off, most wagering amongst themselves over the likelihood of tragedy striking and when that might occur during the journey. Prince Hans looked towards the northern horizon and hoped he had found his place at last.


End file.
